The Willow
by Clere
Summary: A series of discussions between two boys under a Willow tree Remus and Severus, though not really romance at all.
1. Chapter 1

Remus sat under the Whomping Willow, watching the branches whip around him. Jamie was off seducing Lily, and Sirius was doing the same thing, but with most of the Ravenclaw seventh years. He didn't really know where Peter was, but his dear, scurrying little friend had been disappearing quite a bit recently and whenever Prongs and Paddy tried to tickle his destination out of him, he'd blush and stutter out that it was, "N-nothing."

Remus smiled – it was just like Peter to find a girl and be too embarrassed to tell them. He hoped it was that cute Hufflepuff sixth year that Wormtail always fawned over. He would miss his friends, when they graduated. He missed them now, sitting alone on the grounds of Hogwarts with the gibbous moon taunting him from a cloudless sky. One more night, he knew, and he would again be at the Willow, but he would not be Remus. At least his friends would be with him, then, keeping him company and making certain that no one else accidentally found the truth behind the haunted Shack.

The fact that someone – hair like a new moon night, the faintest smell of bergamot and cardamom, long white fingers trembling in terror – had found him once still made his throat close up and his chest tight. A hairbreadth away from expulsion and imprisonment and death. A hairbreadth from murder. Remus shuddered, and tried to swallow the bile that had risen in his throat. He would never forgive Sirius that, not for as long as he lived.

The next day was seared into his memory, the blood under his fingernails, the thin boy lying on a cot in the Infirmary, dark eyes closed and pale face almost peaceful. Poppy had sedated him to clean out his injuries, and Remus had been free to stand there staring at the young Slytherin that James and Sirius had chosen as their worst enemy, at the eyelashes dark against skin that would have been golden if Severus ever went outside. He tried not to look down, to the bare chest and prominent rib cage covered in fresh scars. Scars Remus knew all too well: scars caused by werewolf claws. He refused to look at those, and so focused instead on Severus' sallow face, committing every flaw – deformities, his friends called them, but did he deserve to die because he was not as beautiful as Sirius? – to memory.

He'd stayed there until James came to find him, hours later, but Severus had never opened his eyes and the first time Remus saw him awake was a week later, when the Slytherin dragged him into an unused corridor and pressed him against the wall. Remus stayed limp, waiting for Severus to hit him, knowing he deserved whatever he got. He still didn't understand what had happened, though it had drained the other boy's face of color and made his hands shake.

"Where were you turned?" Severus hissed, close enough that his nose nearly brushed Remus' chin, and the young werewolf was so startled at not being hit that for a moment he simply stood there, confused.

"Cumberland," he finally responded, eyebrows drawing together. Why in Merlin's name would Severus care where he was bitten? Most people wanted to know things like 'Was he under control?' or 'Did he own a muzzle?' Especially people that he had tried to kill. But Severus seemed to be waiting for more details. "I was five, we were visiting cous-"

"What month?" Severus' tone was urgent, and Remus noticed for the first time that the slight boy looked very pale. "What did the woods look like?"

"Um, January, I think," came his hesitant answer. Severus should be ranting at him, or trying to get him expelled, or – going completely still and forgetting to breathe? Was there something particularly repulsive about werewolves turned in winter? Remus closed his eyes, attempting to recall what the forest had looked like, the memory overlaid with terror and regret. He didn't like thinking about it at all, but he owed Severus. Always would, he suspected. "There were –" he paused, hands automatically rising to help sketch out the scene "- oak, maybe?" Herbology had never really been his subject. "Old trees, almost seemed to glow." He snorted. "Though, it _was_ a full moon, as you . . ." The sentence trailed off as Remus stopped focusing on himself long enough to realize that Severus had backed away from him, sucking air in like he was drowning, black eyes wide with – disgust? Horror? "Severus?" Remus said tentatively, reaching out one hand before reminding himself that a purebred Slytherin would not want to be touched by a poor werewolf. It didn't stop the hot wash of hurt when Severus leapt back, away from the comfort he offered. He knew what was coming next, and braced himself for the onslaught. _Beast_. _Monster_. He'd heard it all, and deserved worse from Severus.

Fists tightened as Severus opened his mouth, and Remus tried to tell himself that it wouldn't be personal, wouldn't be – "No," the slender boy gasped out, more to himself than to the other boy. "No, no, it wasn't – Sorry. Had to. I had to." Remus blinked at him, and that movement seemed to alert Severus to the fact that someone else was standing there. He fled down the hall and out of Remus' life for the next year and a half, leaving a puzzled lycanthrope with fists clenched to ward off insults that were never thrown. He had not seen the Slytherin since that afternoon, except in classes and at the dining hall, and had never told his friends what had happened between them. Indeed, they had barely regained their friendship this year, and it was only James' and Peter's pleading that had cooled his anger enough to speak civilly with Sirius. But he had ensured that the cocky Black left Severus alone after that, even as he himself began to study the lank haired boy in their classes, searching for some clue to the terrified boy that he'd seen in that hallway.

The boy who was now stumbling across the moonlit grounds toward the very tree he was leaning against. Remus' eyes widened, and he silently cursed to himself. What was Severus doing, coming to the Willow? Hadn't he learned his lesson the first time? And, more importantly, what would he do when he realized that Remus was there? It didn't take long to find out, as Severus hefted a large branch to quiet the Whomping Willow and then noticed the Gryffindor attempting to make himself as small as possible. Stick in hand, Severus froze. "Hi?" Remus ventured uncertainly, giving a little wave and a tremulous smile.

"You," Severus replied, in what Remus could describe only as an accusing monotone. The arm holding the branch began to tremble, and Severus set down one end of it and used it as a cane instead. Remus could smell the exhaustion rolling off the boy, and the guilt that he always felt around Severus was heightened.

"Are you all right?" he asked, before thinking that was a monumentally stupid question. He also thought that Severus looked like he belonged in moonlight, and frowned. As a rule, he did not like things associated with the moon.

Severus rolled his eyes, but did not turn away as Remus had expected him to. Instead he waved his other hand at the tree and said: "Well, are you going to let me in or not?" Remus wondered if Severus knew how confusing he was, suspected that he did and reveled in it before hitting an unobtrusive knot on the trunk with the flat of his hand, allowing Severus to slip between the angry branches. And sit down next to him, making him nearly leap out of his skin when he felt his arm brush Severus'.

"Don't you think I'm repulsive?" he blurted out before thinking about it, making Severus snort as the tree began to move again. The scrawny adolescent rested his head against the thick trunk and inhaled deeply, as Remus looked on – he'd found that the more he watched Severus, the harder the habit was to break.

"I'm Severus Snape," the dark haired wizard finally answered, voice too smooth for a boy of seventeen, "I find everyone repulsive." It took Remus a moment to see the humor behind that dry tone, and he chuckled belatedly and a bit nervously. He felt like he was approaching a wild animal, and if he made a faulty move he would scare Severus away and once more be alone with the mocking moon. Despite the fact that he had come to the Willow for solitude, Remus found that the idea of Severus leaving bothered him more than he wanted to think about. He was starting to feel like a stalker, watching the Slytherin's every move, cataloguing the way that the silver light seemed to absorb and reflect against sallow skin.

Remus' brow furrowed, and he touched the back of Severus' hand without thinking. "You're glowing!" he declared, and Severus jerked his hand away and pulled his sleeves down over his fingertips and let his hair fall around his face until Remus couldn't see any skin at all.

"Don't be an idiot," Severus snarled from behind his hair, spine going rigid. Remus could have smacked himself: clearly when it came to approaching wild animals, he needed practice.

"I'm sorry," he offered, knowing it was inadequate and not needing to see the glare Severus was directing at him. "I didn't mean to offend you. I just –" he tripped over his words "- it just, it was beau-" and he couldn't say that, because Severus Snape was not beautiful and Remus refused to think that he could be. "How does it do that?" he wondered instead, falling back on something that – while it might still anger Severus – at least wouldn't sound like a romantic overture.

Black eyes peered balefully out from under fine hair, probing Remus for darker motives. The seventh year Gryffindor could feel the touch in his mind – Legilimency at their age! – but clearly passed whatever test Severus had, because the Slytherin leaned back against the tree and released the death grip on his sleeves. Reaching into one pocket, he pulled out some papers and a pouch of something Remus' nose couldn't identify, rolled a cigarette and offered it to Remus who hesitantly accepted. Accepting seemed to be a necessary part of calming the wild animal, and it earned him a look of what might have been approval before Severus rolled his own and snapped his fingers to light it. Remus' eyes widened – wandless magic! Most of their teachers couldn't even do wandless magic! – but schooled his face back to what he hoped was a pleasant expression when Severus glared at him, practically daring him to make something of the display. He held out his own cigarette as a peace offering, and Severus grudgingly lit it.

They sat in silence for a few moments, and Remus would have found it awkward – he generally nattered on in situations like this – but he was beginning to realize that Severus spoke in his own time and that the silence didn't bother the other wizard at all. "It's the Romani blood," Severus told him at last, words edged by smoke that shone blue in the moonlight. Remus took a drag on the cigarette and choked, and through his tears he thought he saw the corners of Severus' mouth twitch. "Be careful," the other boy warned in that liquid voice, "It's potent."

"What _is_ it?" Remus wheezed; stomach cramping from the coughing fit, knowing enough to realize that it certainly wasn't tobacco!

Severus shrugged one bony shoulder. "My own blend," was the vague response, and he knew he wouldn't get any more information than that. "Heady, isn't it?" Remus nodded, used his sleeve to wipe the tears off his face, and tried again. He only choked a little, the second time, and was filled with a pleasantly warm sensation. So this was why Severus always smelled of cardamom.

"You're Romani?" he asked, after recovering his breath and some of his dignity. Looking at Severus, though, he wondered how he had ever missed it. The skin that would be golden if it got any sun, the fine dark hair that hung in waves to the small of Severus' back, the large black eyes. Severus would have fit in perfectly with a Gypsy caravan, excepting his arrogance and his expensive clothes.

"On my mother's side," Severus explained, tone going cool in warning and Remus knew not to pry. That and whatever Severus put in those cigarettes was making him a bit lightheaded. He took another drag, and found it immensely entertaining when he failed to blow a smoke ring. This time he really did see the corners of Severus' thin mouth twitch, face hazy behind a cloud of bluish smoke and skin tinted by the moon and Remus watched, mesmerized by the sight of amusement flickering in dark eyes. Severus would never be beautiful, but –

He quickly shook the thought away before it could form, and tried to come up with something coherent to say. "Is that why the trees glowed?" he ended up asking, replaying the conversation that had nagged at him for over a year, "Because they were Romani?" And the question was so vague, so nonsensical that he assumed Severus wouldn't understand, that he would think Remus was crazy and black eyes would darken with mild exasperation because he was Severus Snape and he found everyone repulsive.

He did not expect Severus to stand in one, graceful movement, staying close enough to the trunk to avoid being hit, dropping his cigarette and crushing it beneath his boot, blue smoke rising around his feet. "I think," Severus said smoothly, tapping one finger against the knot in the tree, voice suddenly cold, "that we have finished playing nice, for tonight." And then he was gone, little more than a black silhouette under the laughing moon as he strode across the lawn and into the castle. Remus could only sit there confused, just as he had over a year ago when they'd last spoken. And if he sat there watching Severus' shadow grow smaller and finally disappear through a side door into a hidden crawlspace, well, that was only because watching Severus was a hard habit to break.


	2. Chapter 2

He stumbled out from the Willow two days later, covered in scratches and wishing it were spring so the moon didn't set while the sky was still pitch black and barely making it to safety before the Willow came to life. He leapt out of the way of a particularly long, vengeful branch and nearly collapsed on – Severus? Remus landed awkwardly on the ground, staring up at the slender, black robed figure standing by his head, its arms folded and enormous eyes regarding him without emotion. The exhausted, recently transformed werewolf hoped he looked that calm, but had a feeling he only looked shocked and injured, and wished Severus hadn't seen him like this, when the evidence that he wasn't human – would never be human – was still blazed across his skin.

As usual it was silent, for awhile, but Remus knew that this time Severus' silence must mean disgust and horror at beholding a subhuman creature, a diseased wizard whose hands had been claws only an hour before. He closed his eyes, and did not dare to look again at Severus' face, did not want to see the neutral expression give way to revulsion. "The tree spirits are part of the lifeblood of a Romani," the voice above him finally said, with a storyteller's lilt. "They grow, you could say, by moonlight. They are nourished by their planter, as the planter is nourished by them." Remus let the words wash over him, run through his tired body. "You might say it is a symbiotic relationship, though that is an inadequate description." And leave it to Severus, to know everything on a level where it could not be explained in words – and why did he know that about Severus? "They do not normally glow." Remus opened his mouth to argue that the trees, tree spirits he had seen _were_ glowing, but Severus cut him off. "They glow once before dying," the Snape heir said, answering the protest Remus had not made.

"They were dying?" Remus questioned hoarsely, throat still raw from howling at the cruel moon. "Why were they dying?" And he heard the catch in the air above him, though he was too tired to understand what it meant, or to open his eyes.

Severus swallowed hard, and there was silence again but for the cry of screech owl and the thunder rumbling on the horizon. "As I said, Lupin," came the soft reply, and Remus had not known Severus' voice could be stilted, "It is a symbiotic relationship." Then there was a rustle of fabric – silk, he thought, but the thunder came again, louder, and he couldn't be sure – and only the faint smell of cardamom and bergamot remained where Severus had stood. Remus did not even have time to open his eyes before it started to rain.


	3. Chapter 3

He stayed outside under the tree every night for a week and Severus did not come. His friends started to grow suspicious, which at least kept them from harassing poor Peter about his new girl, and began to ask him why he showed up every morning with bags under his eyes and twigs in his hair. He shrugged, but did not stutter when he told them it was none of their business. Sirius did not push, and Remus knew why and wondered if their friendship would ever again be strong enough to endure a little tugging and teasing, ever stop feeling like something printed with 'Fragile This Side Up' across the top. The eighth night – quarter moon, grinning mercilessly at him, knowing he was bound to it as any slave was bound to their master – Severus came. Remus thought he saw the boy appear from nowhere just outside the gates, but dismissed the notion as ridiculous, and told his heart to stop beating so quickly.

Remus finished his first cigarette before either of them spoke, and pale green fire danced at Severus' fingertips as he lit the second one. The Willow danced around them and the flames cast the shadow of the branches over Severus' pale face. The dizziness was only from whatever Severus had given him, Remus told himself, and wondered if the wolf would spend the next full moon smelling cardamom and bergamot and blue smoke. He was halfway through his second cigarette before he found the courage to speak, to try to sort out what Severus had told him, what had been echoing in his mind ever since. "The trees I saw when I was . . .turned," he began, praying that Severus would hear him out, trying to say all of it before the other boy ran away. "They meant that someone had died?" He got a curt nod in response, and the surrounding temperature dropped by several degrees, but at least Severus was still there. And he was on the right track. "Someone you knew?" he speculated, trying to sound innocuous, approaching with his hands out to prove that he meant no harm.

Clearly, his maneuver had failed, because Severus was once more on his feet, tapping out a rhythm against the Willow's trunk that practically sparked with magic. Black eyes met amber under a jeering moon, and the Whomping Willow shuddered and grew still. There was a static in the air, a charge, and Remus felt the hair rise on his arms. Severus lifted his chin, jaw set in what might have been defiance, if his eyes hadn't been brimming with something else entirely. "Someone I killed," he bit out and once more vanished into the darkness. Remus hardly noticed when lightning arced across the sky, pulling the electricity from the air around him.


	4. Chapter 4

Remus sat in the library, surrounded by books on the Romani and on pureblood families. His friends were starting to worry about him, but he was too absorbed to care. James was busy trying to figure out how to propose to Lily, Sirius was worried that he would graduate without having bedded every single eligible student and at least one teacher, and who knew what Peter was doing these days, though Padfoot had said that he hoped it was that Hufflepuff. They were all doing very nicely on their own, and could leave Remus to his . . .his what, exactly? His new obsession with Severus Snape?

Sighing, he looked at the five books he was reading about the Snape family and supposed that was exactly what it was. Now if only these books were proving more helpful, he could stop feeling guilty about giving Silvia Dubois a sneezing fit. Apparently no one bothered to clean off the wizarding genealogy section of the library, or to check out any of the old tomes. He read the entry yet again on the Snape family – there was little to no information on Snape's mother's side, not even a mention of her maiden name – but all it said was that the Snapes were a long and distinguished line of wizards. It then went on to list the accomplishments of Snape's ancestors, and while Remus would have ordinarily been fascinated to know that Severus' great-grandfather had bound an elemental this was not the information he was looking for.

Rubbing the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off the beginnings of a headache, Remus had to admit he didn't really know what he was looking for. It wasn't like any of these books were going to explain Severus to him. Lifting his head from where he'd considered banging it against the table, Remus happened to glance at the darkened window. His eyes widened and he growled a few choice words under his breath that made the librarian glare and hush him as he hurriedly returned the books to their shelves and covered himself in dust. It was already dark and he was late and what if Severus had already been out to the Willow and left because Remus wasn't there – he stopped rambling to himself as he ran out of the castle, trying not to think about why it mattered to him that he be there if Severus came. Trying not to think of why he had come out every night for almost a month, disregarding his friends and the school rules to wait for a volatile Slytherin who did not even pretend to be civil.

When he reached the Willow there was someone sitting in his usual spot, and for a moment he was angry at whoever had dared to take this solitude, this watch from him. Then the tree stilled and the smell of cardamom reached him in blue tinged air and the anger left. Panting, he dropped down beside Severus and it was almost companionable, almost like they were friends. Almost like he hadn't tried to kill Severus a year ago, or spent the six years before that standing by while his friends sunk claws of a different make into the awkward boy.

Severus gave Remus the cigarette he had been smoking and did not bother to roll himself another, but all Remus could taste when he brought it to his mouth were paper and spices. He wondered why that disappointed him. He smoked slowly, taking long drags and letting it relax him. It took the edge off his nerves, always oversensitive the week before a full moon. The pull on his skin – under his skin – grew stronger, and made him twitchy even during the day. No one else seemed to notice; though he felt the energy radiating from himself in waves, like something he could touch. "I've added henbane," Severus told him, looking into the distance at the cloud-covered sky, and Remus stared questioningly at him. He had stopped taking Potions after fifth year, and both he and the professor had been grateful. "It's a mild sedative," explained the young expert, "It will help with the muscle irritation." Remus' eyebrows rose in surprise: someone had noticed, after all.

They fell silent again, and Remus felt his eyes grow heavier as he finished off the cigarette. Yawning, he leaned back against the thick tree trunk and resigned himself to another night sleeping under the Willow. It was nice to sleep at all, he thought hazily. Normally he was too tense before a full moon to even lay down, but now he found himself pleasantly dozing off to the sound of branches singing through the air and Severus' breathing. He woke hours later to see the moon nearing the far horizon and feel the crick in his neck from resting on . . .something very bony. Something bony that was at about head level and was covered by black cloth that smelled of bergamot. If his neck hadn't been stiff, Remus' head would've shot up and away from what could only be Severus' shoulder. As it was, all that happened was a rather ungainly jerk and a pained groan.

"Idiot," Severus mumbled, and then nimble fingers were detachedly working the kinks out of Remus' uncooperative neck until he could lift his head without feeling like it might come off. He turned to thank Severus, and immediately felt guilty when he saw the purple smudges under black eyes and realized the other boy had not slept at all.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, voice thick with sleep.

"Don't be. It has nothing to do with you." Coming from most people, Remus knew, that would be a slight, but Severus spoke bluntly and without rancor. Remus could feel the moon setting, fought the desire to run after it, to forget himself and his humanity and chase it blindly into the horizon.

"Will you tell me?" he asked instead, and shadowed black eyes did not bother to pry into his mind to see his motives. Remus worried that perhaps his motives were obvious to everyone but himself, and wondered what they were.

For a long time there was silence, and the moon went down and Remus' skin itched with the call and it must have shown because Severus rolled him another cigarette, another few minutes respite from his own treacherous skin. He smoked and they watched the sky lighten and streak orange with the coming dawn. "Yes," Severus finally said, as the orange blended with pink and the sun rose in the east. "Someday." Remus nodded, and watched Severus through the smoke rings. Watching Severus was a hard habit to break.


	5. Chapter 5

Remus sat under the Whomping Willow, amber eyes looking out unseeing into the moonless night. His legs were folded to his chest but he had stopped rocking back and forth hours ago, and the only tear tracks on his pale face were dried. One hand convulsed on the ground, tearing up the grass and lining his palm with dirt. Somewhere in the distance another firecracker went off, another burst of light, another group of happy, cheering people. The sky was clear. A low, keening sound rose in his throat, but he did not cry. It took too much effort to cry. He had pulled so far into himself that he didn't even hear someone approach the tree, the long stride and rustle of silk robes. There was a pause, and then a voice startled him from his grief.

"Well, are you going to let me in or not?"

Remus growled. How dare he be bothered! Didn't they understand that he had lost everything? Couldn't they leave him alone, couldn't they leave him to chase the moon into the horizon and never return? Anger flashed briefly across his face, but despair overruled it and he settled despondently back against the tree, waiting to be left alone. He was always alone, in the end.

Then a stick stabbed the tree next to his head and even the Willow betrayed him – _betrayal Sirius murderer dead all of them dead dead dead_ – by letting the intruder in, letting the smell of bergamot and cardamom and death invade Remus' isolation. "Stay away from me!" he all but shrieked, scrambling to his feet. His whole body shook as he screamed at the wizard sitting calmly below him. "You killed them! You _killed_ them!"

Someone who had not watched Severus for so long would not have seen him flinch or known that the tightening around those thin lips meant the blow had struck a nerve. "I believe Black did that quite well on his own," came the brittle reply, and someone who had not spent years watching Severus would not have understood the guilt that laced those cruel words. Remus howled and leapt at him, wanting to hurt him, to make someone hurt the way that he hurt. Snape fought back only enough to assuage any guilt Remus might have felt, and by the time he tired himself out the thin lips were bloody and Snape's nose was probably broken. They were both lying next to the trunk, and Remus was panting and crying and suddenly exhausted. He had not slept – could not sleep – since . . .for days, and it had finally caught up to him. His arms gave out and Snape exhaled sharply as a full-grown werewolf collapsed onto his chest. Remus' senses were assaulted by cardamom and bergamot and lemon sherbets – Severus had been to see Albus, then – and he quickly rolled off and propped himself up against the tree.

"Why are you here?" His tone was bitter, and he did not look at the face he had bruised. And he hated the silence, hated that it was familiar and hated the cigarette Snape offered him. Hated the fact that he was too weak to refuse the comfort it offered, the rest.

Severus sat next to him, being careful not to touch him. Long, moon tainted fingers shook in a way that Remus recognized, and he wondered what comfort Snape was refusing. "My father was Quirinus Snape," he finally said, and Remus closed his eyes and inhaled. "He ran the department for the Disposal of Magical Creatures." Remus nearly dropped the cigarette. Shaking fingers brushed back dark hair that had been cut short, above the ears. "He didn't dispose of them." It was quiet for a little while, and Remus tried to soothe the ache in his soul with henbane and cardamom. He did not look at Severus, and he wondered if refusing himself that would make his fingers shake. "There were wards up around the manor in Cumberland. No one else lived nearby. There were hippogriffs and nogtails, quintapeds and nundus." Remus inhaled sharply, and had to fight the urge to see Severus' face. "There was a werewolf pack." He lost the battle, but black eyes were looking steadily away from him, right hand clamped tightly over his left arm and Remus' lip curled. He could smell death on Severus. "My father branded them." Severus' right hand tightened and Remus did not want to understand.

"I had an older brother," Severus said softly, and it did not connect and Remus knew it wasn't true because all of the books he had read – reading, while Sirius plotted with Voldemort to kill Wormtail and Lily and Jamie – had listed Severus as the only heir. "He was six years older than I was. His name was Cyriacus. Father killed him when he failed his OWLS, as an example to me." And Remus did not believe him, and Severus' pain could not compare to his and he did not care if it did. He had not asked for this. But he had, once, and Severus had promised to tell him.

"The winter I turned five was his first year at Hogwarts, away from home." Black eyes turned to regard wary amber. "It was also the winter you were bitten." And someone who had not watched Severus for so long would not have seen the guilt weighing down those bony shoulders. They would not have finally, finally realized that Severus had worn an identical expression years ago when he'd first asked Remus where he was turned. They sat in silence for awhile, watching each other, and Remus noticed that Severus' hands had stopped shaking.

"My father demanded excellence," Severus continued, voice muted as it wove a story Remus was beginning to think he did not want to hear. He could not take any more grief or he would break. "He expected us to succeed at lessons without giving us wands." That explained the wandless flames, Remus supposed, and Severus' OWL scores. Another brush of fingers through dark hair. "He was . . .displeased by failure." Remus thought of his own father, large and Welsh and brimming with laughter and love and knew he could not understand. "My mother supported him, by her silence if by nothing else. I hated her, even more than I hated him." Severus' throat clenched as he swallowed, and he closed his eyes and whispered an apology Remus knew was directed toward him.

"I needed a wand." And it was not a justification or an excuse. Remus would not think of a small, dark boy in an isolated house surrounded by death breathing leopards and wild lycanthropes whose older brother would be dead in a few years because he failed a test. "I could do magic, but it wasn't focused –" and it was a wonder he could do magic at all, so young "– so I convinced my mother to go outside, that night." Severus shook his head in disbelief, though at his mother's stupidity or at the situation Remus didn't know. "I don't know how I brought down the wards – desperation, I suppose." He turned to look at Remus, and black eyes refused to plead for understanding. For forgiveness. "I didn't mean to bring down all the wards, just the ones protecting the manor." Severus inhaled, and finished in a rush. "She had always been cruel to the werewolves, and they took the time to kill her before leaving. All the creatures left, and father had to spend the night hunting them down."

Remus remembered playing hide and seek with his cousins, remembered wandering off into the woods to find the perfect hiding place and being distracted by a copse of brightly glowing trees and the faint screaming in the distance. He remembered the sound of animals running through the undergrowth, and the monsters lit by the trees and by the moon. He remembered pain and the sound of a gun – his uncle's – and then nothing until the hospital and the doctors who would not meet his eyes. He did not need to hear the rest of Severus' story; he already knew how it ended. "Did you get her wand?" he asked, telling himself he did not care.

"For a year," Severus responded evenly. "Then my father realized that I had been using it, and dealt with me accordingly." A pause. "I am lucky that he believed me more intelligent than Cyriacus." And Remus did not want to care. He wanted to be left alone with his grief and his loss – Jamie, Lily, Peter, and even the Sirius he had known, the cocky boy and not the traitor – and Severus could not understand. He swallowed, and focused on slender fingers clenched around a skeletal left arm.

"Did you know," he found himself saying without accusation, "Did you know that Sirius was the traitor?"

Bony shoulders tightened, and Severus looked so guilty that Remus thought the answer must be yes, even in the silence. "No," the dark haired man finally answered, voice sharp with what others would not have recognized as failure. But Remus knew this particular failure intimately – How could they not have seen that he would betray them? – and found himself watching Severus for the guilt tearing at his own chest.

"Do you have another cigarette?" Severus rolled him one, loosing his arm to snap out pale green fire, momentarily casting shadows on the ground. They smoked quietly for awhile, and Remus rested his head against the Willow and let the silence wash over him as his eyes wandered over Severus' face and back to where his left elbow would be, under the sleeve. And he thought of all the times Severus had appeared out of nowhere, seventh year, in the middle of the night, the bags under his eyes that had appeared shortly after Remus had nearly killed him. "I'm sorry," Remus said, bearing the guilt of Severus' curse even as Severus bore the guilt of his.

"Don't be," Severus commanded, and Remus wondered if the other man ever wanted to run after the moon and into the horizon because the pull under his skin was so strong. "It had nothing to do with you." Remus didn't believe him, was surprised that the other man was still sitting there. A few years ago he would have fled in a cloud of blue smoke, face tightly shuttered. Now he stopped trying to hide his left arm and emotionless black eyes met Remus' grief worn gaze.

"Will you tell me?" Remus asked, not quite pressing his fingers to the inside of the darker wizard's elbow, not sure what to do when the wild animal approached him. Someone who had not been obsessed with Severus would have thought their answer was in the way the pale face shut down and the eyes grew cool. But Severus did not run away when Remus touched him and Remus knew the answer.

"Yes." Severus winced at Remus' touch, and exhaled blue smoke as he sagged into the Willow's base. Remus saw new lines around the closed eyes, edging the dark lashes he had first noticed when he was apologizing to an unconscious boy for nearly mauling him, for trusting Sirius when he shouldn't have. And Severus wasn't beautiful, and his wan face didn't make Remus' soul hurt less and the silence wasn't familiar – wasn't comforting – and it was only the henbane soothing the ache in his chest. Tainted skin felt warm through Severus' robes, and probing black eyes met his: "Someday." Remus closed his eyes against the mental touch, and his fingers began to shake. Watching Severus was a hard habit to break.


End file.
